


while there is a soul in prison, I am not free

by tigriswolf



Series: Alternate Universe [89]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Backstory, Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Not Iron Man 3 Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha remembers being seven and meeting a man that everyone simply called Winter. Looking at him, she never wondered why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	while there is a soul in prison, I am not free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pprfaith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/gifts).



> Title: while there is a soul in prison, I am not free  
> Fandom: Avengers movieverse  
> Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Debs  
> Warnings: mentions of violence; mentions of unpleasant things happening to children; all I know about Natasha’s backstory I learned from fanfiction and Wikipedia.  
> Pairings: implied Winter Soldier/Black Widow, implied Bucky/Steve, platonic BFFs Clint&Natasha  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 805  
> Point of view: third  
> Prompt: Natasha remembers being seven and meeting a man that everyone simply called Winter. Looking at him, she never wondered why.

There are more things Natasha doesn’t speak of than things she does. She is the best Red Room ever made and she has secrets upon secrets. She is the last of Red Room’s creations; she ensured that. Nothing could be left of the program – it was too dangerous. Women and girls destroyed as they slept or as they fought, and the Black Widow, unhesitating, unflinching. She was always going to be the last. The men who made her should have known that.

She never forgets the blood on her hands, the red in her ledger. She owes a great debt she can never repay, so instead she repays the debts she can – Clint, Coulson, SHIELD. She is their greatest asset, and a friend. She is the sister Clint never had.

She is the last of Red Room and doesn’t mourn. She never forgets, but she has not thought of those years in a long time when Steve Rogers finishes a portrait and hangs it on the wall in his room at Stark Tower.

“Who is that?” she asks quietly.

Steve smiles sadly, fingers tracing the edge of the frame. “Bucky Barnes,” he says softly. “My best friend.”

She nods and turns, continuing on down the hall. Every night she can, she makes the rounds, checking on her team. She usually ends up in Clint’s room, and they’ll curl up together for a little while.

Tonight, she’s restless and leaves Clint far quicker than usual. He lets her go with no hardship; they are far more alike than not, and he has almost as many ghosts in his past as she does. 

She wants to go back to Steve’s room and stare at the painting. Instead, she ends up on the roof and using a StarkPad to see what SHIELD has on Bucky Barnes. Not much, as it turns out. James Buchanan Barnes, a part of Captain America’s unit, died barely a month before Captain America went into the ice. And Captain America, it was noted, became both more bloodthirsty and reckless with his life after Barnes died.

Natasha stares down at the grainy, black-and-white image of Captain America and Bucky Barnes, smiling at each other in the midst of war.

A year and a month, for Steve, has passed since Barnes fell.

For Barnes, if she’s right, it has been much longer. For Natasha, it has been her entire life, and the man who taught her the most – 

She had been seven, which she only knows because that is the last birthday she remembers, and the grim-faced old man shoved her into the hands of a younger, smiling man, and hissed, “Make something of this one, Winter, or we’ll forget you in the ice.”

Natalia looked up at Winter, at his smile, at his cold eyes, and shivered. His smile matched his name, and though his voice was warm, it was a lie.

Others trained her, broke her down and built her up, unmade and remade her. But Winter was her favorite, when she was allowed choices. And he wasn’t her first anything, but she pretended he was. 

He taught her to fight, to shoot, to run and fall. He taught her to laugh and smile and dance. She grew and he never changed, but she didn’t notice. Until he was gone, she didn’t notice a lot of things. 

She hadn’t seen Winter in three years when she left Red Room and burnt it behind her. She thought he was dead, sure it was the only reason he’d been gone for so long. Before Clint, she heard rumors of an assassin called Winter Soldier, but he was attributed kills Black Widow made, so she figured he (if it was a he) was a ghost.

Staring down at the StarkPad and Barnes’ smiling face, she knows she never went looking because she’d already known.

Natalia had been as in love with Winter as a little girl could be. Even if he still lived, he’d surely be old now – except he should’ve already been dead when Natalia was shoved into his arms. He should’ve been dead for years by that point, and he never aged in the dozen years he taught Natasha. His face the night they met is the same as the face in the picture taken two months before he fell.

She lowers the Pad and stares out over New York.

There are still debts owed. To Steve, to Winter – and maybe to herself.

Yes. If Winter is out there somewhere, they are all that remains of Red Room. And if he is Bucky Barnes, then it is past time to bring him home.

For Steve, and Winter, and herself.

So Natasha drafts a request for leave, submits it, emails Clint that she has business, and is out of the country by sunrise.


End file.
